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Nintendo Wii U CPU And GPU Clock Speeds Revealed

It’s not the speed that counts, it’s how you use it—or at least that appears to be Nintendo‘s strategy with the Wii U.

GamingBolt is reporting on the findings of hacker Marcan who has hacked the new Nintendo Wii U and revealed the clock speeds in its CPU and GPU. Take these findings with the appropriate grains of salt.

The three-core processor apparently runs at just 1.243125 GHz per core, compared to the 3.o GHz cores in the Xbox 360 and PS3. The GPU apparently runs at 549.999755MHz.

Nintendo has taken an interesting approach with the Wii U, focusing apparently more on the console’s physical and energy footprint rather than power. It appears the company is content with bringing its system up to speed with the current offerings from Microsoft and Sony rather than attempt to build a high power system.

And they may have a point. Nintendo fans by and large aren’t that concerned with power. Having an HD Nintendo system with nicer looking Mario and Zelda games and the gamepad for some fun asymmetrical gameplay may be enough.

I’m a bit on the fence on this one, to be quite honest.

On the one hand, these specifications are pretty disappointing. One would have at least hoped for tech that surpassed current consoles, even if only by a small margin. Certainly I would be willing to sacrifice a bit of power consumption in order to get a bit more speed and more reliable frame rates.

The thing is, a great deal of the cost of each Wii U is going to the tablet-controller. What Nintendo was really aiming for with this console wasn’t simply a higher-powered machine, but a living room experience that mirrored the experience and success of Nintendo’s handheld consoles, the DS and 3DS and their double screen gaming.

That’s a gamble. While I’ve enjoyed numerous aspects of the Wii U’s gamepad and find the overall Wii U experience quite smooth, the fact remains that it’s not as snappy as it could be with a beefier processor. Load times are longer than I would like, and the numerous cross-platform comparisons out now show a system that may once again struggle when it comes to third-party titles, especially once we have next-gen hardware from the other major console manufacturers.

Both Sony and Microsoft will be able to develop more powerful consoles and sell them for the same price as the Wii U simply by not including a gamepad. These won’t be PC-gaming rigs, but they could include decent modern GPUs, slightly faster and more efficient processors, and more ram and still sell for a reasonable price.

Nintendo isn’t just gambling on the gamepad, of course. They’re also aware that their consumer base is less concerned with processor speed and more concerned with Nintendo games. For Wii owners, backwards compatibility of games and accessories makes the Wii U an affordable upgrade to HD, allowing them to keep their game library but giving them access to more third-party titles and new HD first-party titles.

Very few people upgrading from a Wii will be concerned that Batman: Arkham City has slight performance issues compared to the other two major consoles. The fact is, they can now play Batman: Arkham City on their Wii U while still having access to all their old games, controllers, and so forth.

Since next-gen competition won’t be out for at least a year, Nintendo will have a good head start in this regard, and will likely be able to get prices down on the system by the time we see Xbox 720 (or Durango, etc.) and PS4 (Orbis) hit shelves.

Of course, we should also be cognizant of the fact that clock speeds are a very poor measure of performance. In many modern processors, clock speeds have actually gone down, while overall performance has increased. This is why a new Intel chip clocked much lower than the old Pentium 4 chips can still run circles around them.

Even if the clock speeds on the Wii U do strike us as quite low, we should realize right away that they must be performing at a much higher efficiency than the chips in the Xbox 360 and PS3 to get performance levels that are basically on par with those systems.

Time will tell, I suppose. I think we’re witnessing a bit of a disconnect between gamers who want more raw power and gamers who are more concerned with a certain type of content. I don’t think this is easily divided into “hardcore” vs “casual” either.

For my part, I enjoy playing all sorts of games. I’m not in the least bothered that the next Super Mario title won’t run on Unreal Engine 4 or utilize 16x AA, and I don’t care if the next Zelda looks as good as The Witcher 2. I’m happy that we have awesome looking games coming out for PC, and I’m amazed at how far developers have stretched the capabilities of the PS3 and Xbox 360.

I’m confident the same thing will occur with the Wii U and its next-gen competition, and all the while the PC crowd will smugly look down their nose at consoles, all of which will be ultimately too weak, outdated and out-paced by PC tech the moment they launch.

Certainly I prefer playing games on my PC and enjoy the speed and graphical fidelity that gives my gaming experience, but my PC cost over three times what you’d pay for a Wii U. Besides, I’ve found the Wii U to be a perfectly enjoyable experience, and one that will allow me to catch up on many years of missed Nintendo titles. For many others, it’s not going to be a good fit. Waiting for the competition to launch their consoles isn’t a bad idea at all.

But if you’re a Nintendo gamer, specs will likely not dissuade you much like the Wii’s specs didn’t dissuade fans this past generation, and many consumers won’t care to begin with.

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“‏@marcan42 So yes, the Wii U CPU is nothing to write home about, but don’t compare it clock per clock with a 360 and claim it’s much worse. It isn’t. ” Perhaps one of the most important tweets made by that person among those following the one about clock speed for those who aren’t familiar with CPU architecture. To sum up his tweets, it’s like saying that the Xbox and PS3 are Pentium IV for the CPU while the Wii U is a first generation Centrino. Much more energy efficient, and not so much clock dependant for performance.

Yes, I’d like to see the whole clock speed debate die as well. It’s already been proven (a long time ago) not to have as much of a profound effect as previously thought. It’s like someone saying that a 3.8 GHz Pentium 4 is better than a 2.2 GHz Core i5 – even with multicore (as evidenced by the 8-core AMD processors vs. the Core i7 quads), it’s about the architecture and throughput of the processors themselves.

More specifically, it’s more important to look at how many instructions can be processed in each clock cycle, rather than the number clock cycles; a 1GHz processor that processes five instructions per clock cycle will outperform a 4GHz processor that only processes one instruction per clock cycle every time.

Clock speed does still matter. There are other things that matter as well, but to pretend that clock speed doesn’t affect performance is naive at best. The size of the chip definitely has nothing to do with performance. It does affect how hot the chip runs, but taking a chip and changing nothing but it’s size will do nothing in terms of performance. So I fail to see why this matters at all… It fits in the case and it obviously runs at a low enough speed to where temperature is not an issue. I’d expect to see this CPU in a cheap laptop, not a game console or gaming PC… It’s definitely the weakest link and will be the bottleneck for the Wii U. That doesn’t mean developers can’t work around it, but it can and already has caused problems for 3rd party developers.

@MatthewBryant Your lack of technical prowess is showing as evidenced by your comment. The size of the chip does impact the performance. When the data has less distance to travel because the processor components are more compact, it reduces latency and resistance. Please refer to Ohm’s Law for more information.

You’re confusing chip size with pipeline size. Smaller transistors does not imply smaller pipelines. This can be true, but you’re making a huge assumption in believing it is true. You won’t see a huge increase in IPS between then older 65 nm PS3 cell processor chips and the newer 45 nm chips. Same is true of Xenon in the XBox 360. So you’d like to say that you’re interested in knowing the IPS of the CPU (which is the only thing that really matters after all is said and done) then you’d have an argument. Chip size by itself does not affect speed. Pipeline length greatly affects the speed (which this post has already made us aware that the pipeline in the Wii U is already relatively small).

That being said, the clock speed also greatly affects the speed. If the Wii U had a 2.5 GHz clock instead of a 1.25 GHz clock it would double the IPS. That’s just common sense. So pretending that the clock speed is unimportant is just naive. It is important. There are reasons to keep the clock speed low, especially if you can get the clock speed to sync with bus speed, but pretending that it doesn’t affect IPS is just ignorant. It does.

Also Ohm’s Law doesn’t address the speed of electricity and how fast it passes through transistors. It merely implies that the voltage is determined by the current over the resistance. What you’re looking for is the speed of the electromagnetic wave which changes depending on the substance that it is passing through, but is generally around 300 kps (the speed of light). Resistance will not affect the speed of light in any way. It merely affects the voltage. As long as the voltage is within the permitted values the CPU will function as intended. If it spikes too high or too low, then the CPU will restart the computer/console so long as it has a semi-competent BIOS.

Furthermore you’re assuming that the speed of electrons through wires has anything to do with the speed of the electromagnetic wave that actually holds the data. It does not. No offense, but you might want to stop throwing around the only equation you’ve heard of in an attempt to pretend you understand how electricity works. I’ve actually taken college courses on the subject. Computer engineering major here. Thanks for the opportunity to teach someone though. ;)

While my comment is not about the Wii U, it does does concern Nintendo’s other offering the 3DS. They really do need to upgrade the processor. And yes, alot of hard core Nintendo fans seem to be content with more versions of Mario / Zelda then you can count, the experience is lacking with with “Hard-Core” game ports such as the Lego franchise or even little known Pinball Hall of Fame games. The CPU and internal memory (NOT drive space) is just not enough to have games with any decent content. Even the developer of Pinball HoF said his group had to put off developing their game for the 3DS because the hardware specs were not enough.

Are the HD graphics anything decent on the Wii U? I’ve thought about getting a Wii U, but figured that actually getting visuals out of it would also require upgrading to an HD TV (I’m also waiting for it to be able to run Amazon Instant Video).